University researchers are preparing to launch a $20 million effort to prove that, when it comes to energy, smaller, rather than bigger, can be better.

“This goes against the mantra of oil and gas that bigger is better,” Joan Brennecke, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, told the Reporter-Telegram by telephone from her Austin office.

She will serve as deputy director of the new Center For Innovative and Strategic Alkane Resources (CISTAR), funded by $20 million from the National Science Foundation. The center will be located at Purdue University, and Purdue’s Fabio Ribeiro will serve as director. But Brenneke said researchers from UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering will work alongside researchers from Purdue and additional partners at Northwestern University, the University of New Mexico and the University of Notre Dame.

The goal is to develop technology that will convert the nation’s newfound bounty of shale gas, with its riches of lighter-hydrocarbon gases — methane, ethane, propane and butane among them — and convert them into liquid fuels using smaller, modular and mobile processing units.

Rather than shipping the gas from Midland-Odessa to Houston or even Louisiana for processing, these units would do the work much closer to the well sites. Success “would mean better utilization of the resource, and better utilization of the resource closer to the resource itself, which could mean more jobs in Midland and Odessa,” she said.

Success would also offer more flexibility in creating transportation fuel, she added.

“If we achieve this, it will give us a lot more resilience. Just look at (the impact of) Hurricane Harvey. If we’re producing transportation fuels from thousands of places, we’re less vulnerable to natural disasters like Harvey,” she said.

The challenge will be developing new catalysts, separation processes and process systems that work effectively on a smaller scale, Brennecke said. The ultimate hope is to develop a system that would fit on an tractor-trailer that, after a well’s production declines significantly, can move on to the next well.

“It’s not taking advantage of economies of scale but economies of mass production,” she said.

It would not only reduce transportation costs, but the risks associated with transporting the natural gas, she said. Analysis will be done to see if the new system would result in a lower carbon footprint, but she expressed confidence that’s what the findings would show.

“There are technological challenges; the catalysts need to get better. We don’t see it as a showstopper, but there are challenges,” Brennecke said.

She said the project has put together a great team of researchers who are joined by a dozen or so corporate partners that include ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell, Clariant, Shell, Honeywell/UOP, BP and Air Liquide, among others. Brennecke said she hopes more will join the effort.

In a couple of years, “we plan on making stuff,” she said, to show the companies so the technology transfer process can begin, that the industry partners can license and develop.

The project’s leaders estimate the new technologies have the potential to inject $20 billion per year into the nation’s economy through the creation of new businesses and a next-generation shale workforce.

UT will receive $3.2 million of the funding. Along with Brennecke, the UT Austin team includes David Allen, Thomas Edgar, Benny Freeman and Mark Stadtherr of the Cockrell School and Sheila Olmstead of the LBJ School of Public Affairs. The researchers will focus on developing materials, technologies and processes for separating reactants and products, minimizing environmental impacts and testing integrated system analyses.

As part of the grant, CISTAR will also oversee workforce development efforts, including training a new hydrocarbon workforce to work at the well sites, as well as engage in educational outreach at all CISTAR university sites.